


the dumb few that forgave us

by coraxes



Series: Author's Favorites [10]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Human Outsider, Post-Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, two former delinquents try to babysit each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22053589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coraxes/pseuds/coraxes
Summary: Billie turned the Outsider human, so as much as she might want to she can’t abandon him on the mountainside. He’s her problem now. At least until she can make him the Kaldwin-Attanos’ problem instead.(Five meals and one drink Billie and the Outsider share afterDeath of the Outsider.)
Relationships: Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster & The Outsider
Series: Author's Favorites [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/875637
Comments: 13
Kudos: 86





	the dumb few that forgave us

**Author's Note:**

> title from "no children" by the mountain goats, which has nothing to do with this story but i feel like the "fuck it let's suffer" energy is very...them.
> 
> can be read as pre-relationship if you want. i'm ambivalent about actually shipping them, but i'm very anti the whole "billie is the outsider's mom now" thing in the same way i'm anti "billie thinks of anton fucking sokolov as a father figure".

**I.**

Just after nightfall Billie found an old collapsed mining tunnel, the shallow stone roof providing a decent shelter. Hopefully what remained of the Eyeless would be too busy panicking over the Outsider’s disappearance to search down the mountain. They couldn’t have expected him to gain a pulse and walk out of their stronghold, right?

Leaning against the rock, Billie tore into a bruised pear she had snagged from the Eyeless’s library. She should have been more concerned about the ex-god that thus far had been following her like a scrawny, clumsy duckling. But now was no time for an existential crisis. Mostly Billie considered making a campfire and wished she were back in a city already. Any city. Except maybe Karnaca. She’d had enough of the place, and it had probably had enough of her too by now.

Meanwhile the Outsider paced. He had eaten shit twice on the way down the mountain—not used to obeying gravity yet, and the slope had made it worse, Billie figured. Every now and then he poked at his skinned palms like he was enjoying the novelty of pain. Billie tried to ignore him as he flickered back and forth in the corner of her stone eye. No more tetherings or foresight for her, but at least the arm and eye weren’t dead weight. For whatever reason. Maybe the Outsider would know.

Before she could decide whether to ask him and risk a speech, the Outsider spoke. “So what now?”

Billie took a giant bite of pear to give herself more time for an answer. This was a mistake.

“You burned every bridge you had left searching for Daud and then for me. You have no ship, no magic. Your money won’t last the week. The man you did it all for is dead. So what’s left of you, Billie Lurk?” His voice was dispassionate, like none of this was _his_ problem.

No wonder Daud hated him so much, Billie thought. Her mouth was still full so she unfurled the twin-bladed knife as a response.

The Outsider blinked at her and finally stopped pacing. “How…predictable of you.” He sounded disappointed, and opened his mouth as if to go on.

Billie got in ahead of him. “Will you shut the fuck up?”

And for her second miracle of the day, he actually did, bright eyes going wide and startled. He really did look genuinely unimpressive now. At least when Emily lost her throne she’d been angry. If Billie hadn’t known what he was he wouldn’t stand out at all. The eyes were striking, but only because they weren’t black, she thought.

“What are _you_ going to do?” she asked. 

For a long moment the Outsider considered. The arc of his pacing expanded across the mouth of the cave. “Travel the world, perhaps. Experience it physically instead of just observing.” He didn’t sound too enthused. At the end of the cave he turned on his heel and walked inside, leaning one arm against the wall next to Billie. Close enough she could feel body heat. Which he actually _had_ now. He hadn’t when he’d grabbed her, that first time he appeared. “I…never planned for this. I expected to be dead after today.”

Billie snorted. _You and me both._ “If you travel by yourself, you’d end up dead in a gutter within an hour.”

“I watched this world for millennia. What makes you think I can’t live in it?” Going for scornful, but he actually sounded offended, like he cared about her assessment of his survival skills. And, alright, Billie had picked up on the fact that the Outsider had actual feelings; he’d been invested in her trip up Shindaerey. It was still odd.

 _Because I just went against one of the handful of people who actually matter to me to save your life, and I’m already regretting it,_ she wanted to snap. But she kept her mouth shut.

_Save the death threats for when you mean them, Lurk. More effective that way._

Billie wasn’t thinking about Daud. She wasn’t.

“You piss off everyone you talk to,” she said, finished her pear, and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “And you’re too scrawny to defend yourself now, so.”

“Neither of those stopped you.”

Billie shrugged. Even as a kid she knew how to get out of fights she couldn’t win. Somehow she doubted the same went for the Outsider.

Thing was, she couldn’t leave him to fend for himself any more than she could stab him and leave him to die on this mountain. Billie had done this to him; that meant he was her responsibility, at least until he figured out what he was doing.

Fuck her life, she thought. Fuck the conscience she decided to grow somewhere down the line, and fuck Daud for putting her in this position in the first place. Oh, and fuck her for falling in line for so long. Billie had jumped right back in like she could propel herself and Daud both into the glory days. What had she been _thinking_?

“What happened to your marked?” Billie asked finally.

The Outsider’s head tilted and he stopped trying to bore a hole into her with his eyes. “Their powers are gone. Soon they will notice something is amiss, if they haven’t already.”

“Emily and Corvo will want to know what happened to you.” Emily actually seemed to like the kid, and she didn’t know Corvo but she bet the same still went for him. It hadn’t been like with her or Daud; the Outsider had helped them get back status they’d lost.

Judging by the way his eyes lit up, the Outsider liked both of them, at least. Huh. “That they will.”

“So let’s go to Dunwall,” Billie said. She had stolen enough from the Eyeless to help them get by for a few days, if they were careful. Merc jobs would take care of the passenger fare and any necessary bribes.

“It always comes back to that city, doesn’t it,” mused the Outsider, sounding as if he was gearing up for a big speech. Thankfully his stomach chose that moment to growl. He jolted, looking down at his alien body.

Despite herself Billie cracked a grin. She pulled out a tin of jellied eels and nudged the Outsider’s arm with it. He frowned down at the label. “I haven’t eaten in three thousand years. I won’t start with these.”

“Don’t be picky,” Billie said, rolling her eyes, but she swapped the tin for a stolen bread roll.

That met his standards, at least. The Outsider slid down the wall to sit on the gritty stone. He took one tentative bite and then wolfed the rest of the roll down. Billie fished in her pack for more stolen food—bread, a couple more pieces of fruit, tinned fish. It wasn’t a lot but she could hunt on their way back to civilization. Hunting squirrels couldn’t be too different from shooting rats, right?

The Outsider ate not just like he was starving but like he was _used_ to starving, like his food might be stolen mid-bite. When he slowed down and started to make a face Billie passed him her canteen.

“Thank you,” he said, and she nearly choked on her jellied eels.

“Sure,” she managed. “Will the Eyeless think to check here tonight? Or should we keep going?”

“They’re probably all dead.” When Billie startled he looked at her sidelong and continued, cheerful, “You saw how the Void was collapsing as we left. Their stronghold is bound up in it. And most of the cult was unconscious thanks to you.” Her fingertips dug into her thighs. “Don’t tell me you regret that. You haven’t stopped killing since Daud died. Even for you, the conservatory was bloody work. Does the bone charm you earned from that job even work anymore?”

“No idea. Can’t hear them.” That hadn’t stopped her from using charms between losing Daud’s powers and gaining her fancy new limbs, but who knew how magic was working now? “The conservatory was different—you saw what the Abbey was doing to Delilah’s old girls.”

“It did make a good excuse, didn’t it?”

The Outsider looked at her like he knew exactly how she felt as she read that job, all her helplessness and grief crystallizing into something as familiar and hot as arterial blood. Billie hadn’t figured out how to fix Daud, had barely understood where her journey would take her, but she knew how to kill things.

Well. She was what she was, and she wouldn’t act like she was sorry over a few Overseers' deaths. Billie’s chin jutted up. “Yeah, it did. At least I knew what I was doing when I killed them.”

“Would you have left me there, if you had known doing otherwise would kill my jailers?”

She snagged her canteen out of his loose grip. “No, but I would have known.”

The Outsider gave a condescending little nod. Billie rolled her eyes and took a drink.

He started nodding off quickly once he had some food in him, still propped up against the stone wall—if he wanted to risk a sore neck in the morning that was his business, Billie figured. It could be a learning experience. She stayed awake a little longer, exhausted but still keyed up.

The silence was alright at first, without the kid and his pointed comments jumping in. Daud and Anton and Hypatia never had room to judge, Aramis hadn’t known anything about her _to_ judge, and Emily had kept to herself. Billie could have done without the Outsider’s philosophizing. But without him to distract her the crisis that Billie had kept putting off seeped into her brain, curdled in her gut.

Daud was gone forever, a secret even she couldn’t find. And she was so _angry_ with him.

Where had he been when Delilah had come back to life, all those years ago in Aramis’s mansion? Where had he been when she was ending the coup? Why had Delilah even managed to claw her way from the Void in the first place, when Daud was supposed to have taken care of her?

Billie had never had a problem reconciling hating Daud with…not hating him. Yeah, of course she wanted him back; she wanted him back weeks ago so she could chew him out the way he deserved. But fuck, where had her old belligerence been when he was still around to hear it? They could have made something besides a mission out of his last days. Put down a little more of the baggage she’d spent fifteen years lugging around.

And yet—she glanced at the kid, out of it, snoring—she couldn’t regret what had come of this. Billie had always wanted to change things. Hard to make a bigger difference than this.

Billie began to drift off a few hours into the night. Then she was jolted back to wakefulness by the kid running out of the cave. She heard him stumble over himself in the woods and rolled her eyes.

“Glad you figured out pissing on your own,” Billie said when he got back. “Takes a load off me.”

The Outsider shot her a look, truly venomous even in the dark.

**II.**

They reached the outskirts of Cullero after sunset on the second day. Billie pulled on gloves to cover her Void arm and made the Outsider help wind gauze around her stone eye. It was distracting as all get-out; Billie could make out just enough light and movement through the bandage to keep her on edge. But she had to blend in somehow.

Cullero was exactly how she remembered it: the whole city had an artificial feel unlike Dunwall and Karnaca, the streets a little too planned and the buildings too clean and uniform. Billie drew a couple of odd looks, but she thought it was just because of the bandages. Not a lot of injured miners in this city. There were no wanted posters with her face on them, either, so that was one complication they didn’t have to face yet.

Her plan was to pick up some street food and eat it while they searched for a place to squat for a few nights—preferably somewhere with a shower. The Outsider had other ideas. A few blocks into the city proper he stopped in the middle of the street, near the entrance to a smoky little hole in the wall. “Let’s eat here, before I starve to death and all your hard work goes to waste.”

“Dramatic,” Billie said, reaching for his wrist. She wasn’t usually this tactile with people she didn’t know well, but he’d maimed her at their first meeting. Kind of eroded personal barriers. “Come on, there’s a lot to get done. We’ll eat on the way.”

The Outsider sidestepped her hand, backing into the flow of foot traffic. “I’ll treat you,” he offered.

“With what money?” But she checked her pockets as she spoke, under the guise of crossing her arms. 

The Outsider edged back a little more, into the path of an approaching woman. He apologized, she waved him off, and once they separated the Outsider held up a wallet. Lights from the restaurant lit his face oddly in the sunset; when he smirked at Billie his eyes almost looked black again. 

It was nicely done, she could admit. Classic. “Alright, sure.”

The scent of tobacco in the restaurant was so strong Billie’s fingers started itching for a pipe. She hadn’t thought to take that from the _Dreadful Wale,_ though, so she was twitchy and irritable—more than usual—within a few minutes. The Outsider got a bunch of those weird little Serkonan skewers with pickles and olives and cucumbers, and that helped a little.

Once she’d eaten three of the skewers Billie made herself slow down and drummed her fingers on the table. “So you can pick pockets,” she said. “What else can you do?”

“What else can I _do_?”

“You spent, what, four thousand years floating around up there?” Billie raised an eyebrow. “You must have picked up something useful.”

The Outsider considered for a moment. “Cento novantanove novantotto ottantasette. Trecentoquarantadue.”

He popped an olive in his mouth while Billie tried to figure out what he’d just said. Probably something condescending or cryptic. “Is that, what, High Serkonan?” No one spoke anything but Gristolian anymore, really, but Serkonos’s old languages stuck around in folk songs, especially in the mountains. She’d had a crewmate once who knew a lot of them. The words were unfamiliar, but the sound was the same.

“Spero che ti piaccia questo, Billie Lurk,” he said.

Definitely condescending. “Alright, I get the point. You know a dead language.”

“Три точки один четыре один пять девять два шесть пять,” said the Outsider.

“You know more than one dead language.” Billie rolled her eyes and reached for her water glass. Not like that helped her any. Maybe if Anton ever needed help translating old texts—but no, if she had any say over it the Outsider wasn’t getting near Anton.

Before she could press him any more—or before he could keep messing with her—their bowls of fabada arrived. It was hard to mess up pork and beans, but this was a lot better than anything she could have made herself, hot and rich and greasy. By mutual agreement, they wolfed down most of the stew without bothering one another.

“You were asking for a reason,” the Outsider said after a while.

Billie licked her spoon. “We need money for a ship. Fastest way to get money is a black market job.” She could, maybe, take her time and plan a real heist, but fares weren’t expensive enough for that to be worth it. She had caught a lot of heat in Karnaca and it felt like only a matter of time before the news traveled here too. Better to find a client and get money fast. “Unless you can point me to a cache of buried treasure somewhere.”

The Outsider considered. “Not in Cullero, unfortunately.”

Figured. “Once we’re done here, we’ll find a place to squat for the night and I’ll get to work.” Ancient languages aside, she couldn’t see him being more than a liability.

He’d been hunched over the table but at that he reared upright. “No, I’m coming with you.”

The Outsider still wasn’t anything striking, Billie thought. But with the deep shadows under his eyes and wear on his face from a few days’ worth of travel, he could pull off intimidating. Or at least confident. Might work better on people who weren’t her.

She had made weirder allies. She’d trusted Emily Kaldwin, of all people, to trek around Karnaca and watched her grow into a one-woman army. Billie leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms. “Convince me.”

The Outsider pointedly held up the wallet he’d stolen.

“That was pickpocketing. I’ll be looking for more complicated jobs. Think you could plan a heist, kid?”

“I don’t want to _plan,_ ” the Outsider snapped before she could go on, and flopped back in a loose mirror of her own posture. “You have no idea what it’s like to be stuck in place. Watching, unable to interfere for centuries. I want to _do_ something, Billie Lurk. Perhaps I won’t be as practiced as you are, but I know how you operate. I could be _useful._ ”

“Hmm.” Billie raised an eyebrow and took a sip of her drink. She’d seen him shocked and annoyed and exhausted, but she hadn’t seen him quite this agitated yet, like his veneer of calm was wearing away to show something disturbed. Part of her wanted to see how far she could push.

But he was already gaining back a little of his composure, and his next words were more deliberate. “What was that speech Daud used to give? Half the work is mindset. I want to do this, Billie, and I won’t panic.”

“Don’t talk about Daud,” Billie snapped. That had been such a _him_ speech too. Billie had always thought it was bullshit. Assassins needed to keep their heads on straight and not be a dumbass, but most of the job was knowledge and skill, not psychology. She rubbed her eyes and picked her spoon back up. “We’ll give it a shot.”

The Outsider smirked like he’d expected her to give in, but he was too relaxed, she thought, for it to have all been an act.

**III.**

When Billie woke up her joints were hurting more than her injured arm, the clearest sign she’d had yet that she was getting old. All they had done last night was commit a bit of light insurance fraud. Still, Billie felt like she’d gone ten rounds with the City Watch. Her arm wasn’t that bad off at least; the wolfhound they’d run into on the way out had gotten more of her sleeve than her flesh.

She grimaced and rolled onto her side, a little closer to the edge of the bed. The exposed bone of her Void arm dug into her ribs. But the smells of coffee and something oily were wafting through the apartment she and the Outsider were squatting in, so after a few minutes Billie managed to convince herself to get up and start walking.

When she saw the Outsider in the kitchen her first instinct was to duck behind a doorway and draw her knife. It didn’t look like _him._ He was wearing different clothes, for one thing, some faded blue undershirt he must have found or stolen instead of the high-collared white shirt and black coat he’d trekked to Cullero in. The neckline was deeper than before, so Billie could see where his peeling sunburn cut away to pale skin. Between that and the few days’ worth of stubble he still hadn’t shaved, the Outsider just looked—normal. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was.

He also had a pot of coffee going and something sizzling in a skillet, which was almost as odd.

The Outsider didn’t look up. “I thought you might wake up soon.” Of course he had. Billie was pretty sure he said shit like that to mess with her at this point. “Can you crack the eggs into a bowl?”

“Since when do we have eggs?” Billie squinted against the sunlight as she started to dig through the cabinets. “And what’s this for?” He’d left sliced sausage on the cutting board and seemed to be frying diced potatoes; she’d made enough hash to tell he was sort of successful.

“I went to the market down the street, and I’m making tortilla. We’ll still have plenty of money for a ship’s fare,” he added.

Billie hadn’t known there was a market down the street. Billie tried to know as little of Cullero as possible. But hey, breakfast. Her search rewarded a mixing bowl; she cracked and scrambled the eggs and fixed herself coffee while the Outsider finished up the potatoes.

“Where did you learn how to do this?” Billie asked finally.

The Outsider rolled his eyes, reminding her for a moment of Emily. “I _have_ been watching the world. Not everyone spends their days committing crimes.”

“Just your favorites.”

The Outsider shrugged, conceding the point, and Billie grinned down into her mug.

Once he had drained the potatoes and poured everything back into the skillet he added, “I was a baker’s apprentice for a few years.”

There was a lot Billie could ask about that but the first thing out of her mouth was, “They had _bakers_ when you were human?”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Of course. They were even more of a necessity then. Have you ever tried to bake over a wood fire?”

No, she hadn't. She didn't even bake now. Billie had spent most of her life without access to an oven, and then when she got her own ship with a nice working oven Anton had broken it. Billie wasn’t going to say that, though. The Outsider was baiting her, and she was too curious about his life as a human to let him get away with it. “Go on then. How’d that happen?”

“I was an orphan, or good as, and the baker felt sorry for me. She had no children of her own to teach.” The tortilla sizzled away in the skillet. He shook it a little and then left it alone to make his own mug of coffee. “It was the only time I was involved in a real occupation. The Eyeless came around a few years later.”

“You must have been pretty young, then.”

“Fourteen, fifteen, around there.”

He was so casual about it. Billie let out a long breath through her nose. “You don’t look fifteen.” Not much older than that, though, maybe Emily’s age.

“It was difficult to be taken seriously as a teenager, especially after I figured out how to make my throat close up.”

“Your—what?”

He drew a line across his neck with one finger.

Ritual sacrifice, right. “How long did that take?”

“Hard to say. Past and present and future all flow around and through each other in the Void.” There was an odd cadence to his voice, as though he had spent a long time thinking of how to explain this. Maybe he had: floated alone with his thoughts, waiting for someone to ask him what it was like. “It took me a while to recognize linear time.”

Well, this was getting a little macabre even for Billie. She still hadn’t finished her first cup of coffee.

Billie leaned her elbows against the counter. “There was a baker near one of the streets where I slept for a while.” The Outsider nodded, dispassionate. She couldn’t tell if she was repeating something he already knew, but if she was he could cope. “She made these peach tarts. I don’t know what it was about them, but I sort of—fixated.”

When _not being hungry_ felt out of reach it was easy to convince herself that if she could have this _one_ thing, not only would she never be hungry again, it would be the best food she ever put in her mouth.

“Deirdre had just gotten out of her uncle’s house, and she still had money. I guess she didn’t know how hard it was to get more, or else she just really wanted me to stick around.” Billie had thought it was a calculated move at the time, a bribe. It was in part, but it was also just _Deirdre._ She liked people, and she knew how to make people like her; she would have been running her own gang if she had made it a few more years. “I don’t remember if I said something or she just saw me looking, but the day after we met she marched into that bakery and bought one and we split it.”

The Outsider was only half-paying attention as he tried to flip the tortilla over. It actually made the telling easier. She hadn’t talked about Deirdre to another living being in ages. And he was probably used to being a confessional. “Hmm,” he said.

Billie took a sip of her coffee. “Anyway, that’s how we found out I’m allergic to peaches.”

He managed the flip, sort of; something about the motion was off and a big chunk dangled dangerously over the edge. “Are you?” the Outsider asked, a little frown between his eyebrows. He shoved the tortilla back into its pan, hissed, and flapped his burned hand.

He didn’t need help, right? If he needed help he’d tell her.

“Yeah, I got giant hives, swelled up like a balloon. Not sure how I didn’t die.” Billie snickered. At the time it had been terrifying, but she had almost died so much that now it was just stupid. Like that time the Watch raided a Whaler safe house while she was in the shower. “Deirdre didn’t stop apologizing for weeks.”

“Huh,” said the Outsider.

“You didn’t know that one, hmm?”

“I never claimed to know everything.”

Billie was pretty sure that was a fucking lie, but she let it go in favor of retrieving plates and forks. They ate in the sort of silence that was starting to feel less odd. And his cooking wasn’t half-bad, either.

Mid-bite she remembered there was something she should probably tell him. “I think my powers are coming back.” The Outsider froze, raising an eyebrow. “Last night, when we were running, I swear I saw the start of a transversal marker—purple light, a little bit of that weird stone. Didn’t work, but…” Billie shrugged.

“It’s not implausible,” the Outsider said slowly. “Your power came from the old god and the Void, not me. My departure may have…unsettled things, but as the Void adjusts to my absence things may return to normal for you, relatively speaking. That the eye and arm work at all is a good sign.”

A grin flitted across Billie’s face. She’d done alright without powers for a while, but she _liked_ them. And if she was going to have to hide her arm and half her face she wanted to get something for her trouble. “How long will it take?”

“I suppose we’ll find out,” said the Outsider.

“Helpful.”

The Outsider tore apart his breakfast with his fork for a moment and then added, “I’m glad the arm and eye still help you. I was…goading you when I did it.”

Bille blinked at him. She wasn’t used to apologies, certainly didn’t expect one from _him_ of all people. “I don’t mind them. I was pissed at first, but if you’d asked I would have taken them anyway.” Blending in as Meagan had never suited her; it felt good to be so obviously distinguished, in the same way her lieutenant’s red and whaler mask had set her apart. Even better than the mark might have. “And I tried to kill you, so.”

The Outsider shot her a wry look. And, yeah, she had picked up by now that he meant to be killed; the few decades Billie had bought him as a human were nothing but an unexpected bonus.

“Call it even?”

“Sure,” the Outsider said. When he rose from the table he touched her shoulder, acknowledgment or apology; and it was almost—nice.

**IV.**

The passenger ship they booked to Dunwall was the fanciest Billie had ever officially ridden on. (The fanciest ship she had unofficially ridden on belonged to a middle-aged cloth merchant, but he died of an apparent heart attack in the hot tub before it left Dunwall harbor.) She had considered stowing away or paying a contact to let them bunk off the record in the cargo hold, but it seemed less conspicuous to just board like normal passengers under an alias. Billie Lurk was supposed to work alone these days. No one would expect her to be hanging around a young man. And this way they got their own cabin, so she could worry less about someone seeing her without her gloves or eye bandages. Even though she had to share with the Outsider the cabin still felt roomy, for a ship; it was nearly as big as Anton’s cabin aboard the _Dreadful_ _Wale._

The food, though, was standard ship’s fare: oily fish from a tin, stewed cabbage, whatever vegetables would keep through the voyage. Several days after leaving Cullero, Billie and the Outsider took their plates to one corner of the crowded common room. It buzzed with conversation, people eating and playing cards, a couple of kids running around screaming their heads off. They ate in silence, content to people-watch, until a woman at a nearby card table threw down her hand and snapped, “Outsider’s crooked cock!”

Billie glanced at the Outsider from the corner of her eye. His face stayed carefully blank.

“What?” he asked finally, and Billie had to work not to laugh. “Something you want to know?”

“Well,” she began, and promptly lost the battle with her laughter. It was nice, not having to worry about his opinion of her. If he hated her already, that was that, and if he didn’t then poking fun at him over suggestive curses wouldn’t be the last straw after everything. Plus he annoyed her without even trying. “Nothing. I’m a classy lady."

The Outsider muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath. Then he glanced up, eyes catching on something near closer to the bow. “How’s your arm?”

Billie followed the Outsider’s gaze down the length of the ship. Coming down the stairs leading to the main deck was another passenger. She had brushed paths with him a few times: an older man, pale with a short white beard and a military haircut. He wore no mask or uniform but he walked like an Overseer on patrol, so Billie had kept her distance. His eyes swept the room, and Billie turned back to her food so she wouldn’t be caught staring.

“Better,” she said. The bites were never that severe in the first place, and healing fast with no sign of infection. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ll need everything to be in working order to get into Dunwall.”

Billie waited but the Outsider shoveled another forkful of cabbage into his mouth. “You wanna be any more ominous about that?”

He shrugged, and she knocked her knee hard against his. He returned the gesture with a little more force.

“I saw our Overseer friend there coming down the hall past our room. He sleeps in the first-class quarters,” the Outsider said finally. His voice was low: hard to overhear, but didn’t draw attention like a whisper. “He asked about you. Where we had met, why we were traveling together.”

Billie frowned. “What did you say?”

“Same thing we’ve been telling everyone, of course.” The Outsider rolled his eyes. “Still. That he was asking at all doesn’t bode well. I don’t know whether they’ve linked you to what happened at the conservatory, but if they have, he could make things difficult for us.”

And it wasn’t impossible. The black market owner or any of a half-dozen passerby might have seen her heading to the conservatory. And even if they didn’t link her to _that,_ Billie’s record wasn’t exactly spotless.

“He might try to have us thrown in the brig,” Billie said. “Or he may wait until we dock to get reinforcements. I haven’t seen any other Overseers, and he won’t know I don’t have magic.”

“Have you seen the lifeboats up on the deck?” the Outsider asked.

Had she seen the _lifeboats_. Like Billie hadn’t spent over a decade aboard ships. Then she realized what he was suggesting. “That’s going to be a lot of rowing.” They were still at least a day out from Dunwall.

“Yes, that’s why I asked about your arm.”

Billie narrowed her eye at him. “You do know you’ll be rowing, too.”

The Outsider made a noise of assent and rocked to his feet. “Do you want seconds?”

Not really, but if they were doing this she would need the energy. Billie handed him her plate. If this whole swanning-around-being-mysterious thing didn’t work out, she thought, he’d make a decent shipmate. She wasn’t sure where he’d learned his manners but it was good at least one of them had some.

He returned a few minutes later and waited until she had a mouthful of mashed potatoes to add, “You should know I can’t swim.”

“Mmf?”

“Never had the opportunity as a human, and I never had to worry about drowning in the Void. Nothing so literal, anyway.” He gave her a look that was too solemn to be anything but bullshit. “I’m sure you won’t let me drown, after all the trouble you’ve gone to.”

“Swimming's an important life skill. Maybe Emily can teach you once we get back to Dunwall. And then Corvo can teach you to shave.” The Outsider had nearly two weeks’ worth of patchy stubble now. Billie couldn’t imagine he _liked_ it very much, considering how often he kept scratching it.

The Outsider grimaced and, as if hearing her thoughts, scratched his jaw. “I know _how_ to shave, I just keep forgetting it’s something that needs to be done. Being human involves so much _maintenance._ ”

“Poor kid,” said Billie with as much sympathy as she could muster. It wasn’t a lot.

“Must you keep calling me that?”

“What else am I going to call you? John?” She wasn’t sure why he picked that alias, but it was the closest he’d come to picking a name that wasn’t _the Outsider._

“Try--” and then he said something Billie didn’t have a hope of pronouncing, distorted and elongated like the voice she’d heard when she used her powers. “As it’s my _name._ ”

Weren’t the dead supposed to be the only ones who could speak his language? Maybe they were just the only ones who could still read it or something--either way, Billie couldn’t begin to replicate the noise he’d just made. “Yeah, okay, next time I want to sound like a strangled ox.”

“Eat your cabbage,” said the Outsider, longsuffering.

Billie shoved at his head. “Whatever, kid,” she said, and laughed when he shoved her back.

**V.**

By the time they reached Dunwall Tower, Billie was sure her arms were going to fall off. Even her Void arm ached from rowing--a neat trick, since it didn’t actually have muscles. They were close to a rest, at least. She hoped. The Outsider had dragged Billie to one of the Tower’s back doors, where he spouted off a bunch of coded nonsense to the watch officer stationed there. Billie wasn't sure what exactly it meant but it got the officer to send for Corvo.

Billie shivered. Maybe Emily would let Billie dry off before banishing her from sight. If not, Billie would be on her own. She had barely seen Dunwall beyond the harbor since Daud had told her to leave the city; she had no idea where any of her old contacts were anymore. Beside her the Outsider bounced a little. Maybe in anticipation. Probably just to keep from freezing. It had been easier to ignore their spray-soaked clothes when they were rowing.

Finally the door opened to show Corvo, turning his well-worn scowl on them both. His gaze skated over the Outsider but he seemed to recognize Billie, at least. “What’s going on?” he asked. His wrapped left hand flexed at his side; it reminded her of Daud. “What do you know?”

“Quite a lot more than you, Corvo,” said the Outsider.

Corvo jerked to face him and Billie saw the moment it clicked, that this scrawny half-drowned kid with ordinary hazel eyes was who Corvo thought. The Outsider smiled vaguely and dripped onto the cobblestones.

“It’s what you think,” Billie confirmed anyway. “You see why there have been...issues.”

“But how--” Corvo shook his head. “You should come inside.”

“Is Emily back in the city? She’ll want to hear this from me as well,” the Outsider said. Billie had no idea what she’d be back _from,_ but of course the Outsider would have been keeping an eye on her before Billie got up there. 

Corvo nodded. “She caught a ship back from Morley as soon as--well. But she’s out of the tower at the moment. I’ll send someone for her, but it will be a few hours until she returns.” He holds open the door. “You should dry off before you catch your death in the meantime. What happened to you?”

“Most recently, the ocean,” said the Outsider.

Corvo didn’t sigh, but it looked like a close thing. Billie bit back a grin. So he didn’t limit that to her and Daud, then.

The map of the tower she’d built in her head all those years ago told Billie that Corvo was leading them to the guest wing, which she probably could have surmised anyway. Still, it was more reassuring than a dungeon. “I’ll send someone for you when Emily’s back,” he told them. “The staff will bring you dry clothes.”

Since they had a few hours, Billie took it one step further and helped herself to a scalding shower. When she returned to the guest room there was a pile of still-warm clothes on the wardrobe--including, rather thoughtfully, gloves, dry boots, and an eyepatch--and a covered tray of food. Carrying the whole tray felt like too much for her abused shoulders at the moment, but she was still starving. Once she’d replaced her wallet, bone charms, and weapons, Billie stuck a meat pie in her mouth and most of a loaf of bread in her pockets. Then she went to find the Outsider.

He had flopped into one of the ornate chairs, and he was reading the paper and eating a fancy little tart. Between that and the well-made clothes the servants had provided, he could have passed for an aristocrat. It was a weird thought, that he might fit in here. 

“Listen,” Billie began before he could get a word in, “I’m leaving before Emily gets back.”

The Outsider blinked and bent backwards over the arm of the chair so he could look at her, albeit upside-down. “She won’t _attack_ you, Billie.”

“Did you hear what Emily told me before she left the _Wale_?” Billie didn’t think Emily would execute her or anything--she’d had her chance, after all--but the situation still felt precarious. She rubbed the back of her neck. Better not to push it.

“She’ll be too distracted by my situation to be angry at you,” the Outsider said with a careless wave of his hand.

Billie snorted. “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”

“Emily and Corvo both have been...grateful for my gifts in the past.” 

She wasn’t imagining that teasing lilt to his voice, was she? “Cradle-robber. You’re, what, six hundred times their age?” Billie shook her head in mock disapproval.

The Outsider’s smile widened. Then he sat upright and turned so he could look at her like a normal person and not a gangly, overgrown bat. “If you’re really worried about your safety--”

“I’m not,” she snapped. “Or not just that. I just--I shouldn’t be here, alright?” The last time Billie had been this deep in the Tower she’d been rendezvousing with Burrows, trying to extort a larger sum for the empress’s murder. She stuck her hands in her pockets and tried not to fidget too obviously. Nervous energy bubbled in her gut; she’d decided to leave, so she needed to get it over with and just _go._ Deal with whatever came next.

Besides, her job was done. The whole obnoxious package was safely delivered. There was no reason for Billie to stick around and watch the Outsider talk to people he actually liked. And if she left, she didn’t have to explain she’d walked away from Emily’s speech and immediately gone looking for Daud.

“Well,” the Outsider said slowly. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

Billie rolled her eyes. Know-it-all. “Are you ever?” 

“Of course I am,” he said, with a little twist to his mouth. “Frequently by you.”

Billie didn’t know what to say to that, so she ducked her head and tried to ignore the warmth flooding her face. It wasn’t praise, not exactly; she shouldn’t care about it so much.

“Thank you for getting me this far,” he told her.

“Yeah, well.” She drifted back toward the door. She felt like she should do something, shake his hand or whatever, but it just seemed awkward to close the distance between them now. “Take care, kid.”

“Take care, yourself.” He lifted one hand in a wave. “See you later, Billie Lurk.”

Billie snorted. Her flesh hand found the doorknob, and she returned his wave with the other. “Right. See you.”

**+1.**

Billie has taken a corner booth with a line of sight to both the front and back doors, for all the good it does her; she doesn’t look up from her drink when he pokes his head in. It’s not until he’s clearly walking toward her that she takes notice. Surprise and confusion and something like fondness all cross her face before she manages to control her expression.

There are many ways he could start this conversation. Once when he thought of saying something he could watch the reactions his words might evoke. When he’d first become the Outsider it was hard to tell which he’d actually said and which answers were real, realities and possibilities all tangled in a knot. His viewpoint is simpler now in a way he’s not sure he likes but finds interesting regardless. He’d forgotten what it was like to feel so tied to the moment.

It’s Billie, though, so as he slides in beside her the Outsider says, “You don’t disappear as well as you used to.” 

She probably wasn’t trying. This is a bar she haunted often as Meagan Foster, close enough to Dunwall’s harbor that she considered it neutral ground. But it gets her to shove at his shoulder. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Leaving Dunwall, I expect.” The Outsider points at her drink. “Can I try that?”

Billie raises her eyebrows and passes it to him without comment. He realizes why after he takes a sip. It’s some dark, hoppy beer, definitely not a taste he’s acquired. The Outsider tries not to let his distaste show, but she’s smirking when he hands back the mug. “What went wrong with the Kaldwins? Are you in a hurry?”

“Nothing went _wrong._ ” Emily and Corvo are—well, they’re Emily and Corvo; intriguingly idealistic, set in their ideas about the monarchy, always scurrying. He remembers that from Emily’s first few months on the throne back in the day. The failed coup has them trying, and they’ll keep trying for a while until their urgency burns out or the next crisis hits.

He doesn’t count his situation as a crisis. It doesn’t threaten Emily’s throne. Without his mark she’ll probably be safer.

Still, who knows where the Abbey will look once they realize he’s gone? Or what might rise out of the Void in his place? Emily is good at arguing in favor of her own safety. Certainly the Outsider would have better-educated guesses about potential threats than most. But the Kaldwins will be fine. Emily will create a nice little legacy for herself, and somewhere down the line all her hard work will be undone, and the world will spin on. This time, thankfully, without him to see it.

“As it happens, I’d rather not spend what remains of my life sequestered in a tower and feeding secrets to my hosts,” the Outsider says finally. He thought he’d made that clear. Apparently not clear enough for Billie. _Honestly._ The Kaldwins made an interesting show, and he'll probably always be invested in them. But he has his own life to live now, and it will be more interesting than the theater they made.

“Well, in that case.” Billie slumps back into the booth and considers him. “All my grumpy old men are gone, so I’ve got a vacancy on travel partners. If you’re interested.”

The Outsider nods, and tension bleeds out of him. He’d hoped, but—he wasn’t sure. “What are you planning, then?”

Billie shrugs.

“We could steal a ship, see where it takes us.” He’s only half joking.

“I don’t want to turn pirate.”

The Outsider makes a show of looking at her eyepatch and raises one brow. “Yes, you do.” He saw her consider it a few times over the years: before she got the _Wale_ and was sick of her current captain, when hauls didn’t net as much as she expected, when she just missed the feel of the blade in her hand.

Billie pulls a face. “Well, it wouldn’t be a good idea.” She slumps back in her seat, body language easy and open in a way he hasn’t seen since they set foot in Dunwall, and drums her fingers on the table. “You hungry?”

Not really, but that doesn’t matter. The Outsider smiles. Emily said it made him look like a shark. “Starving.”

“Let’s go then,” says Billie, so they do.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are much appreciated, as always.
> 
> a note about languages: in my head different parts of serkonos speak fantasy-Italian and fantasy-Spanish. or they used to. weird how everyone only speaks english with american accents no matter where you are in the dishonored universe, huh? anyway, if you're looking at the google translate results for what the outsider says and thinking that it can't be right--it's right.
> 
> happy new year! i probably won't write as much fic next year--i really want to finish an original project for once--but it's been a good ride. if you are one of the people whose usernames i keep recognizing: thank you. i really do notice and i appreciate you sticking with it.


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